Mention video to some people and watch their faces fall. If the cliché
of "modern sculpture" used to be a piece of stone chewing gum
with a hole in it, and that of "modern painting" was a canvasful of drips,
then the cliché of "video art" is a grainy
closeup of some U.C.L.A. graduate rubbing a cockroach to pulp on his
left nipple for 16 minutes while the sound track plays amplified tape
hiss, backward. Video art has not yet shaken off its reputation as...